Well, I spent a total of about 10 leisurely hours upgrading to WP 2.1 and messing with a new template. Other than 2 or 3 hours of trying to figure out how to get my blogroll to display properly (I can’t for the life of me get the 1. Bookmarks out of it - I have played with every parameter of the new tag except for the right one, obviously), 2.1 went off without a hitch. I am not keen on the new blogroll tags and the fact that you don’t have much control over the blogroll within admin like you used to (unless I am not seeing it!)l but it’s probably just having to teach an old dog a new trick that is making me resistant.

This theme is kinda business-y for a fun lovin’ gal like me, but I like it, the coding is very nicely done (thanks Brian!), it doesn’t look too cluttered (love keeping some of that cluttery stuff in the footer) and everything works as expected, which never happens for me. I even managed to tweak the b5media blogroll so it looks normal sized instead of giant. And it works. And, most importantly I didn’t have to ask for help. w00t!

I keep thinking I want to get a custom theme, but if I can’t even figure out the basics of what I want, how on earth will I ever be happy with one someone else does? I searched through about 15 Googlepages of designers last night and just didn’t see any one of them that did much for me. I don’t want it to be too boring, or too techy or too girly or too - I don’t know what the word it - swirly maybe. If I see another theme that looks like it has cutouts, I will scream. I love Chris Pearson’s Cutline, but I just keep seeing it over and over and over again - its a great template though - maybe next time I get in a switcheroo mood I will try some customizations and see what happens. I even tried to clear my mind of the bazillion templates I had been looking at and try to imagine what I wanted my blog to look like, and I couldn’t even do that. I think I would drive a designer insane at this point. I am driving myself crazy. I have looked at every 2 column, 3 column, widgetized template with pink, black and gray that exists. And all the non widgetized ones too.

Now to replace that CJ up there with something that is more me. I will surely think of something more suitable soon enough…